Stories we tell

I pinched this quote by Margaret Atwood from Austin Kleon’s tumblr, to add to my collection of ideas about “stories”. (I am also intrigued by the film trailer he’s posted over there.)

When you are in the middle of a story it isn’t a story at all, but only a confusion; a dark roaring, a blindness, a wreckage of shattered glass and splintered wood; like a house in a whirlwind, or else a boat crushed by the icebergs or swept over the rapids, and all aboard powerless to stop it. It’s only afterwards that it becomes anything like a story at all. When you are telling it, to yourself or to someone else.

~Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace

Since I have been posting about marriage, strangely enough, and since I am back on a Sara Groves run (she cycles around regularly in my life), here is an “after story” song from Sara, about marriage, aptly called When it was Over. I do love this song.